Tag: braves

lol, I love to see the Dodgers lose

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In case you missed it because I did too: the Disney Anaheim Angels of Southern Orange County Los Angeles sweep the Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend

Unsurprising, this is what happens when a team gets good, succeeds, spends boatloads of money, signs all the notable free agents and becomes the internal darlings of the league they’re in – they mostly become reviled by fanbases that are not supporters of them in the first place.

I mean, I wasn’t really ever a Dodgers fan at any point of my life with the closest thing to support being when Chan Ho Park was there, but for the most part, I just never really cared about them.  They were a fringe team that played in a weak division and never seemed like they were any threat to actually succeed, especially when the Phillies bounced them every time they ran into each other in the playoffs.

But then they eventually got their shit together, started making the playoffs every single year, basically bounced the Braves from them every time they encountered each other except for 2021, and had been enjoying a renaissance of sorts.  I started to dislike them.

Then, they poached Freddie Freeman from the Braves, which wasn’t entirely their fault as much as the Braves being the Braves, meaning the cheapskate fucks that absolutely will not spend money on a free agent that isn’t at their peak, but for all intents and purposes, the Dodgers took the heart out of Atlanta, and I really disliked them.

And then their organization deployed a pelican strike on the league by exploiting deferred money deals to avoid luxury tax penalties while at the same time securing massive money deals on just about every notable free agent on the market, most notably getting Shohei Ohtani for $700 million dollars, en route to committing over a billion dollars on free agents.

By this point, if baseball fans that weren’t Dodger fans already didn’t dislike the Dodgers, this is where they really began to.

It’s not that they’re cheating or doing anything at all that’s not legal, it’s just that they’re really driving home the reality of the importance of spending money, and there’s a lot of misguided frustration and hatred for their own teams, being directed at the Dodgers, but the bottom line is that the Dodgers have basically become the most hated team in the league, even more than the Yankees depending on whom you ask.

So that’s why it’s so satisfying to see when the Dodgers perform like anything other than the team that outspent the rest of the league to construct an uber-roster, and not just get swept at home, but get swept at home to their in-city archnemeses, in the Angels.  And not just the Angels, but the lowly Angels who have 2/3 the payroll of the Dodgers, as well as have a living leech on the squad in Anthony Rendon who is getting paid $38M to not play at all. 

And to top it off, the Angels were without superstar Mike Trout, who is also on the disabled list, and they still took the Dodgers behind the toolshed to shellack them, in their own house no less.

I didn’t catch a single game, much less even know about it after the fact, but I just fucking love it all the same, and it does bring me great joy to see the Dodgers fuck up in such a monumental manner.  It’s just so hilarious because the TL;DR of the whole thing is that the Angels suck and the Dodgers don’t, but the Angels still swept them. 

It’s as big of an upset as the Pistons beating the Lakers in 2003, whenever Tom Brady had a brainfart and lost to the Dolphins, or when the Honda Civic beat the Ferrari in a drag race in that one video clip that was ever only available on fucking RealPlayer.

When the season is over, the Dodgers will still most likely be in World Series contention, while the Angels probably won’t even be close to even the play-in series, but for one weekend in May, the Dodger-hating contingent of baseball fans can all collectively point and laugh at the Dodgers and all their shitty soft-ass fairweather fans.

Nobody feels bad for the Dodgers when they don’t succeed, and it is always joyous to see them lose, but getting swept at home by the rival Angels, is probably going to be the lowest point for the squad this season.  And I love to see it.

Man, it’s great to have baseball back

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ain’t nothing to bring us back to the joys of baseball being back in season than a team trotting out a position player to pitch in a blowout game.  On Opening Day.  Against the Chicago White Sox, fresh off of their historic record-setting 121-loss season.

I know the Braves dropped their season opener out in San Diego, but the Padres are actually a good team, and the Braves could just as easily come back to Atlanta 6-1 or 1-6 seeing as how they have the Padres and Dodgers back-to-back to start the year.

But the Angels, a team whom in spite of having lost Shohei Ohtani, still have Mike Trout finally healthy on the team, and should be better than the Chicago White Sox whom really made no attempt to compete, once again.

It’s going to be a long season for both these teams.  And it’s going to be a long season for the Braves too, because 162 games a season plus potential playoffs means a whole lot of fuckin baseball!

Really though, despite the fact that I have no real intention of watching, well, any games, I’m feeling optimistic about the Braves this season.  As long as they can remain healthy, then I think they have the chance to be a noticeably better squad this year than the one prior where they limped into the playoffs and were bounced unceremoniously.  Despite my general dissatisfaction with their typical Braves-ey lack of movement in the offseason, I do like the acquisition of Jurickson Profar, and although they’re no blockbusters, I like them getting guys like Craig Kimbrel and Alex Verdugo for depth.

Either way, short of some comical fuckups and occurrences, I wouldn’t expect much baseball talk in the brog.  I find that I’m most happiest when I’m not really paying attention to the game these days beyond a cursory glance from time to time.  I still love it, I just have so no time in my life to dedicate to it as I once did, and feel that it’s expendable in the grand spectrum of my day to day.

I still hear about the high level points without any effort, and when the day is over, it’s the dumb silly stuff like position players pitching and other goofy anomalies that I tend to enjoy writing about.

Happy Opening Day!

Revisiting a massive biff of an old post: Chris Sale to the Braves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As daily as I can, I like to look at the posts I’ve blathered over the years, utilizing the On This Day WordPress extensions.  It feeds into what narcissism I do have, I like to see if there have been any noteworthy changes in my opinions over the years, and in cases like this, it’s interesting to see when I’ve made some clairvoyant predictions or in this case, colossal biffs.

A year ago, I was none too pleased to see that the Braves’ solution for their lack of pitching depth was trading for Chris Sale, when there were many acceptable pitchers available, such as Sonny Gray, Tyler Glasnow, Dylan Cease, and as pipe dream as it would’ve been, Shohei Ohtani.  Some were more preferable than others, but any one of them would have been an obvious upgrade to what was a typical Braves-ey pitching rotation.

All of the ships sailed, and then the Braves traded away noteworthy infield prospect Vaughn Grissom to the Boston Red Sox for Chris Sale, which had me scratching my head and immediately pondering just how bad of a deal this was sounding like; even more so when the Braves immediately extended Chris Sale for two more years at actual money, something that the Braves are basically allergic to doing, locking themselves in for two more years at $38M.

Sale used to be one of the best pitchers in the game, but he was two years removed from Tommy John Surgery, a maligned season where his numbers fell off a cliff, and looked like he was busted goods at this point.  At the time, it seemed like the Braves were trading away a valuable chip for a broken pitcher, and I thought that this was going to be a colossal L for the Braves, punishment for being the usual Braves-ey cheap, bargain basement hunters.

Fast forward back to present time, and Chris Sale is the National League Cy Young winner, after pitching the triple crown of leading the NL in Wins, Strikeouts and ERA.  I’m not entirely sure how he didn’t get a unanimous vote, but the BBWAA is a bunch of spiteful blowhards who don’t really vote with any objectivity in the first place, so I guess it’s no surprise, but the point is, I doubted the effectiveness of acquiring Chris Sale, and was completely wrong, and I’m big enough to admit it.

Chris Sale was the epitome of the ace pitcher he used to be for the White Sox and the Red Sox, and he truly turned the clock back and pitched lights out baseball all year long.  Especially when Spencer Strider went down, it was Sale who was the bastion of stability and acted like the stopper, when Max Fried buckled under the weight of the walk year, Charlie Morton really started to show is age, and whenever the squad kept trotting Bryce Elder out there and expected fans to accept him as a viable starting pitcher.

And to further reflect on the trade itself, Vaughn Grissom put up a clunker season for Boston, hitting mediocrely for their Triple-A squad and even worse when he was called up.  He’s still pretty young and playing ahead of his age expectations, but if the last three years have been any indication of what kind of path he’s headed, then it looks like the Braves are going to continue to win this trade, as long as Sale continues to pitch well and Grisson continues to slide.

Although I admit the biff I had had with my opinion of this trade, the worst part of it all is that this does buy the Braves front office a little equity with the opinion that they might know what they’re doing.  It brings some validation to their decisions to shop the bargain bins and for a little while, it gives them a little grace whenever they pull this act again in the near future, that their next (few) low-risk/high-reward decisions could always end up being the next Chris Sale.

As pleased I was with Chris Sale in 2024, Chris Sale was most definitely the exception and not the rule, and I’ll be ready to pounce on scathing the Braves for being the Barves when they make their next shitty Braves-ey cheapskate move, without much concern that I’d have to revisit it in the future if I’m wrong.

Fuzzy the Clingstone: as if it were going to be anything remotely interesting

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: Braves’ AA-affiliate Columbus Clingstones announce the name of their mascot – Fuzzy

Naturally, I didn’t expect much when I found out that the Columbus Clingstones were seeking out a name for their anamorphic peach mascot.  Not that they’re being forced by the Braves like they once used to, but being a Braves affiliate still means they’re not going to do anything remotely interesting or willing to rock the boat.  I didn’t know, nor did I really care to look into what the other options were,* but considering “Fuzzy” won out, I can’t imagine that they were possibly anything competitively intriguing.

*Fuzzy, Pit, Stoney and Cobbler; yep, nothing exciting

Fuzzy is the name that a three-year old toddler names their favorite stuffed bear.  Or any sort of stuffed thing that comes into their possession that they declare in two seconds that they want to have forever and is already their best friend.  I love my kids, but they’re still too young to be coming up with some seriously clever and/or meta thinking names for the things they want to name yet, but they’re also four and three years old, and I have a hard time believing that of the alleged 675 fan suggestions, they were all toddlers.

Unsurprising though, considering the lukewarm response to naming themselves the Clingstones, a term that most people outside of the southeast have never even heard of, that they would go with an absolute snoozefest of a name like Fuzzy.

I was hoping that the Clingstones would’ve carried on a trope started by the AAA-affiliate of the Braves, when they were crowdsourcing for a new name; they came up with four finalists, had a voting period, and when the vote was over, they announced a name that wasn’t even one of the options to begin with, the Stripers.  In all fairness, the Stripers was way better than all of the available options so it wasn’t all for the worst, and considering what options the people of Columbus had to pick from, it would’ve been both hilarious and productive if the same kind of thing happened here as well.

Frankly, as much as I like the actual mascot of Fuzzy (what can I say, I’m a sucker for anamorphic food mascots), I hate the name.  It would’ve been great if they had their silly little voting period, and then in the end, went ahead and declared that the name of the mascot be Clinger, the Clingstone.

And with a name like that, it can create all sorts of room for interpretation, but most prevalently the fact that a clinger is an allegory for a little turd that is stuck to a creature’s butt, which seems appropriate for the absolute flop of a naming rebrand the Columbus baseball organization did.

It’s like, I really like the colors, the mascot, the general aesthetic of the team; but the names Clingstones and Fuzzy the mascot are just colossal whiffs.  It’s like I wish the team could borrow the Time Stone from Dr. Strange or Thanos, rewind just far back enough to where they got to the point where the brand kid was complete but didn’t have a name, and just re-did reality to where they might have gone with other names before the Clingstones and subsequently, Fuzzy.

But at least it served as impetus to create an image of Fuzzy the Clingstone being the clinger that the names of the team are in my opinion, and poop jokes sell, in my little slice of the internet.

Suck it, MLweeB

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not too thrilled with the fact that the Dodgers completed their season of destiny and won the World Series, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy for Freddie Freeman, who was obviously named the World Series MVP after batting .300 with an OPS of 1.364, four home runs, 12 RBI and the legendary walk-off grand slam in game 1 that basically set the entire tone of the series afterward.

Even though he plays for the Dodgers, the team he left Atlanta for, there’s not a bone in my body that holds any resentment or ill-will for the man, as he’s a first-class outstanding human being, embodies everything that’s good about baseball, and is someone whom requires a genuine effort to not like.  I am stoked that he has now won his second championship, played his butt off to win the WS MVP he easily deserved, and is getting the mainstream accolades and recognition that he deserves.

I just don’t care for the fact that the Dodgers organization are the world champions, because they kind of validated the importance of spending money, as they committed over a billion dollars ($1.185B to be exact)  to just four players, on top of their existing $230M payroll, and being a Braves fan, it’s aggravating to see teams that spend money that succeed, knowing the team I follow will never, ever spend in the same manner, and instead feed us all sorts of bullshit rhetoric and make excuses on why they won’t, despite all the evidence that exists that shows the economic benefit of a championship team.

Plus, the swarms of insufferable bandwagon Dodger fans scuttling out of the cracks and gutters like the cockroaches they are getting to be happy is annoying to me, and makes me make the face of the Friends watching meme whenever I see or hear all the front-running celebratory garbage that comes from them in the news or on social media.  It’s bad when I would rather put up with the devil I know in Yankees fans getting to be happy over Dodgers fans, even in spite of the shenanigans of the two outfield goombas who grabbed and tried pry the ball out of Mookie Betts’ glove among other typical bad Yankee fan behavior.

But most of all, the Dodgers winning the World Series is precisely what MLB wanted to be the outcome, because they’ve gone full weeb-mode this season, what with pushing Ohtanimania down everyone’s throats, and seemingly every popular team there is making a mad dash to acquire Japanese talent, none more than the Dodgers with not just Ohtani, but also Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and they’re all treated like these mystical Mr. Miyagis demonstrating karate for the first time in history based on how every little thing they do is made such a big deal about.

Make no mistake, the season Shohei Ohtani had was other-worldly, but for every game where he had a homer and two steals, Yamamoto goes five innings with three earned runs, and it’s applauded like he just pitched a Maddux.  Shota Imanaga has a low ERA in the first half of the season and people act like he knew how to throw a disappearing pitch, meanwhile the Braves’ Reynaldo Lopez led the league in ERA up until like August, but nobody cared about him because he wasn’t Japanese.

I think my favorite part of the World Series was that in spite of the monumental rocket ship the Ohtani hype train had strapped to it, fans and viewers were treated to a series of futility as he went a pitiful 2 for 19 (.105) in the series, an OPS of .385 and no home runs.  Aaron Judge was absolutely dragged by the media and fans for being ineffective, in comparison to Ohtani, he went 4 for 18 (.222) with an OPS of .836 and one home run.  It’s just that the Yankees as a team stunk it up throughout the series and used Judge as a scapegoat, while Ohtani could easily hide underneath Freddie Freeman’s Superman cape while the team kept on winning.

Which brings us back to Freddie Freeman, whom is the only thing I like about the Dodgers winning the World Series, because a I genuinely like, enjoy and admire, gets to be the focal point and superstar, everyone in Atlanta already knew of, everyone in Los Angeles is probably well aware of now, and probably every baseball fan in the world is aware of now too.

When the lights were the brightest, the stakes were the highest, Ohtani absolutely crumpled under the pressure.  Yamamoto, to his credit did pitch a great game in his one start, but when all was said and done, the World Series was the Freddie Freeman show, and even if it means that the Dodgers are World champions, I am okay with it.

This is Freddie Freeman’s world, and everyone; Ohtani, Yamamoto, the country of Japan, the rest of MLB, are just living in it.

Columbus Clingstones: what, you were expecting something better from a Braves affiliate?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MiLB: Atlanta Braves’ AA-affiliates formerly known as the Mississippi Braves, formally change their name to the Columbus Clingstones, with their move to Columbus, Georgia

Originally, I was excited at the notion that along with the move out of racist-ass bumfuck Pearl, Mississippi, the Double-A Braves would be getting a brand-new team name and identity, steering them away from the homogenized and stuffy Also-Braves of Mississippi.  The AA Braves could have the opportunity to be an actual, fun, minor league team instead of being a minor league squad beholden to the stuffy and constricting brand standards of the Atlanta Braves Corporation, as they had been over the last, well since the existence of Braves Minor League Baseball.

But at the same time, I knew that I had to temper my expectations, because baseball in general doesn’t like to rock the boat too much, and for every Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, Rocket City Trash Pandas, Hub City Spartanburgers or any chintzy and creative minor league squad that appears out of nowhere, there are four other boring teams out there, like the Salem Red Sox, St. Lucie Mets, Fredericksburg Nats, and other squads that put the bare minimum of effort into their existences, and hope that by solely being present and loosely affiliated with their parent clubs, they will draw attendance.  And if I had to wager what side of the spectrum that an Atlanta Braves affiliate was going to lean towards, it definitely wasn’t going to be on the side where “fun” was, because fun doesn’t always necessarily equate to cashmoney.

So I was about as surprised as learning that global warming isn’t fake news when the news finally broke, of what the new Columbus Baseball Club was going to call themselves, and it was the Columbus Clingstones.

As I imagine most people’s reactions probably were, mine was first and foremost, what the fuck is a clingstone?

According to Google AIoverlord:

A clingstone is a type of stone fruit with flesh that sticks firmly to the pit, making it more difficult to remove than other fruits. Clingstone peaches are a common example of this type of fruit. 

And my first reaction was, oh, so there’s a difference between the peaches I like, where the pit falls right off, and the peaches that I always regret buying, where the flesh sticks to the pit and I always feel like I’m wasting delectable peach flesh when I have to cut around it to enjoy my fucking fruit, and it turns out that I’m not a fan of actual clingstones, and I’m most definitely not a fan of the name, Columbus Clingstones.

So, it figures that the Braves dropped the ball when it came to having a minor league affiliate with a name that is of below-average excitement.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the Emperors of Rome, and I like the clusterfuck that ended up with the Gwinnett Stripers, but the team had an opportunity to rise into the upper echelon of memorable and noteworthy minor league squads, but to no surprise, much like the organization’s entire modus operandi, stick to something vanilla, safe, boring and mostly forgettable in the vast pool of minor league baseball teams.

I will say though, as not mad just disappointed I am in the lame as name of Clingstones, I do have to give credit to the merch team, for running with the lameduck ball they were handed.  Although I’m not a fan of actual clingstone peaches, I still love peaches the fruit, and they are easily in my top-3 favorite fruits.  And I have a soft spot for mascots that are basically just inanimate objects given eyes and limbs, so that being said, I do appreciate the branding that the Clingstones have done, even if I think the name is booty.

That being said, I do want a shirt of the peach mascot, and I would consider getting a 59fifty cap if there’s a variant where it’s just the peach mascot, but I wouldn’t want anything that actually said Clingstones on it, because that’s how much I loathe the name.

So overall, the name is trash, but the execution of the branding has been done pretty well.  Unfortunately, the name is still set in stone at this point, and there’s no part of me that doesn’t connote the prefix “cling” as a negative, from clingy people to turds that cling to the tips of your dog’s fur after they take a crap that they end up wiping on your floor, so the general consensus to the whole unveiling of the Braves’ AA affiliate is a net-negative.  But then again, expecting anything dynamic and exciting out of the Atlanta Braves organization, even if they’re not officially owned by them anymore, is still like expecting to win a lottery, and this all frankly comes as no surprise.

Every Braves fan can hear the gears grinding

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: Dodgers release Jason Heyward, he is free to sign anywhere that will take him

Anyone who’s been paying attention to the Braves this year has probably noticed that the team is operating on its usual Barves-ey cheapskate bullshit, picking up inexpensive castaways, cuts and releases from all the other teams in the league and trying to pawn them off like they’re the answers to the team’s woes and shortcomings.

However, the Braves have been pretty flagrant this year by picking up, almost exclusively, former players, with the hopes that the fans are as dumb as they hope they are (but surprisingly, aren’t) and put happy memories and false optimism on the obvious facts that these guys were all available because they’re not playing as well as they once did in a previous time, like 2021.  Eddie Rosario, Jorge Soler and Luke Jackson are some of the guys re-acquired by the team, with Rosario not only having been cut by the Braves, but he’s also, at the time of me writing this, just freshly cut from the Mets, after already being cut by the Nationals earlier in the year.

Soler hasn’t been terrible, but he also hasn’t been the World Series monster MVP he was in 2021, and Luke Jackson has been what he’s always been – a mediocre reliever, that no longer has Will Smith and a healthy Tyler Matzek and a pre-sucking AJ Minter to hide behind in the bullpen and is getting exposed as of late.  In other words, the Braves picked up mediocre product before the deadline and shouldn’t be surprised by getting mediocre return in investment.

But with the news of Jason Heyward’s release by the Dodgers, I feel like there’s no way in hell that I’m the only Braves fan whose blood went cold upon hearing it, because I think we all collectively knew the second we saw it, what some extreme cheapskate bean counters at The Battery were thinking when they saw it – pick ‘em up!

Believe me, Jason Heyward’s regular season debut on the Opening Day of 2010 is still one of the most magical sports memory I’ll ever have.  The super-typed 20-year old rookie phenom blasting a three-run home run in his very first at-bat against the Chicago Cubs is still stuff of legend, and having a monster rookie season, en route to being one of the core players of the organization for the next few years, all fantastic memories.

Heyward himself was always a stand-up player, a great role model for kids, and a guy that any organization would be happy to have.  I have no ill-will towards the man whatsoever, and I like him personally, but when it comes to his place currently as an active baseball player, I would rather the Braves not Barves, and pick him up, and try to convince fans that they can fix him back to being an All-Star, and insist on trotting him out on the regular, when the team is still somehow, miraculously in the thick of things when it comes to playoff position.

There’s a reason why the Dodgers released him, in favor of Chris Taylor of all people, and any contender like the Braves should probably think twice before considering picking him up, unless they want absolutely nothing but a 9th inning defensive replacement for a corner outfielder.

But I have this sinking feeling that the Braves aren’t going to listen to any logical arguments against Jason Heyward’s return to the team, and are going to be looking at dollar signs, exposure, newspaper articles and editorials about the prodigal son’s return home to Atlanta, and pick him up anyway soon.  The loss of Ronald Acuña, and the tumultuous health of Michael Harris II, outfield depth is stretched thin as it is, but Heyward’s .208 batting average this year really isn’t going to help out.

And these are the things that separate the Braves from being among the league’s elite, in spite of their general, miraculous on-field winning record.  I guess I should be fortunate that the organization continues to field a playoff-caliber team, but at the same time, I kind of wish they’d blow it all up, in order to build a World Series championship-caliber team, but I digress.

As much as I like and admire Jason Heyward the person, as a baseball player, his best years are long beyond him, and the further he stays away from the Braves, the better off the team will ultimately be.